Kayaking with Scott and Mig

Kayak fishing has always been on the cards for Fishing & Adventure, but they never quite managed to make it happen, so naturally this was a trip they’d been looking forward to for a few years. Mig shares the tale...

There were always going to be challenges with fishing out of a kayak for the first time, let alone with filming the whole adventure. Our first port of call was to decide on the perfect fishing platform, and after a solid bit of research we settled on the new OldTown Kayaks which have a good base setup for fishing and allow you to choose between two different propulsion options. OldTown Kayaks have a standard traditional paddle model and a pedal-propelled model. I went with the traditional paddle kayak while Scott really liked the look of the pedal option.

We kitted them out with a few extra RAILBLAZA attachments and installed Betta batteries, Raymarine sounders and transducers.

We chose Karikari Peninsula in Northland as the destination for our maiden voyage because it ticked off a few key requirements. We wanted to find a place with sheltered areas (as there was consistent bad weather leading into the trip), quick access to good fishing grounds and, ideally, a location that gave us the chance of catching some decent- sized snapper. The surrounding coastline looked extremely fishy and, being a peninsula, it gave us shelter in most conditions.

We set the challenge to land a snapper over 4.5kg (10 pounds), which to some might sound easy, but with this being our first time kayak fishing it turned out to be difficult enough!

The plan was to soft-bait the shallows as this method is perfectly catered to kayak fishing in many ways. The fact you don’t need several rods and different tackle options makes life easy with real estate on a kayak being so precious. All we needed was a couple of rods, a few jig heads, leader and some soft-baits. The silent and stealthy nature of the kayaks also works perfectly for soft-baiting as you can fish the shallows (at times only a couple of metres deep) without spooking fish. We found the ease with which the kayaks navigate this shallow terrain very handy as you can bump over weed and rocks and get into the guts and cracks without any trouble.

Our sounders turned out to be a crucial bit of kit which we used constantly for checking depth and sniffing out sign. Scott was using the Raymarine Dragonfly unit which is a sounder commonly used on kayaks because it’s a compact unit with a simple and easy-to-navigate software system that still provides great detail of the terrain below. I was lucky enough to be using the new Element unit which comes with awesome features like Side Scan, a mode that works great in the shallows as it spots sign all around the kayak. The Element unit includesa a ‘three mode’ option which easily changes between your three most used functions at the press of a button. My personal favourite became the four-way split screen of chart, sonar, SideVision and DownVision as I got to utilise all of the cool elements (excuse my pun) of the sounder at once.

The fishing definitely wasn’t hard and fast, but we were targeting the kelpy moochers, not schooling fish that are often in big numbers. Our first spot led to a few kahawai which gave us a chance to iron out the hooking, fighting and landing procedure. With the first couple of fish under our belt we pushed on and out to more likely looking fishing grounds. The morning passed without much action, but we continued to fish into the afternoon with the hope that dusk was going to turn the fishing on. We were not disappointed! As soon as the sun slunk behind the horizon the snapper bite went crazy. We started the session with a nice 3.5kg snapper for Scott and then a flurry of fish followed with every cast getting smashed. The non-stop action led to some manic moments: I lost my paddle more than once, my sunglasses sank to the depths and a GoPro went missing. These are usually all things that would kill the mood but fish were coming over the side and that’s all that mattered.

Kayak fishing is well suited to dropping lures and soft-baiting.

As dusk turned to dark the fishing slowed and it was time to make a move back to base to prep for the next day’s fishing. With a change in the weather pattern we decided to push up the coast and try some soft-baiting in slightly deeper water. This is when the sounders really came into their own. Every time we found sign stacking up we landed a fish. It didn’t take long for the bins to starting looking healthy but the big ones were still eluding us. We fished into the evening which wasn’t quite as frantic as the night before but still led to Scott landing two fish agonisingly close to our challenge size (4.5kg) and I landed another nice three-kilo fish. As the night rolled in, the fishing slowed, and only a few smaller snapper were landed. We called it a day and our little Surtees 575 centre console, Up Ship Creek, led the way home. Luckily we only had to paddle/pedal the short two kilometre trip back to shore.

Our first time fishing from kayaks has definitely left us wanting more. They’re so easy to use, very stable and you can cover large sections of coastline surprisingly quickly, particularly with the PDL model. Fishing so low down and close to the water also changes the dynamic of the fight and comes with its own new challenges and techniques.

We can’t wait to have another crack and with a bit more practice we’ll be getting towed around by some beasts in no time.